PM Comments April 24 2025
Good afternoon. Soybean oil futures paced the Board of Trade rally on Thursday, with buying emerging across most grain and soy markets through the morning hours and lasting throughout the session. As discussions with China are ongoing and otherwise unchanged for the most part from yesterday, trading again became a bit technical, with bean oil taking out its fall high from last year in the July contract, and May soybeans closing above the 200-day moving average for the first time since early February.
CK closed Thursday at 4.77 and 1/4, up 5 and 1/4. CN was up 4 and 3/4 at 4.84. SK popped to a new high for the move and closed 12 and 3/4 higher at 10.53. SN was up 11 and 3/4 at 10.62, and also made new highs for the move. WK finished a penny higher at 5.29 and 1/4. Products were mixed, May soybean meal closed at 288.70, down $2.10/ton, and May soybean oil closed at 49.65, up 1.74 cents/lb. This the fifth consecutive lower close for meal, while bean oil traded to its highest level since the end of 2023 and took out the November high from last year. Livestock markets were mixed on Thursday, June live cattle closed at 208.00, down 10 cents, August feeders closed at 292.70, up 52 cents, and June hogs closed at 99.92, down 22 cents. Inside day for the cattle markets, and the hogs had a gap-lower open this morning. Outside markets are mostly higher, crude oil futures are up 30-40 cents/bbl, the Dow Jones index is up 480 points, and the US$ index is down 50-60 points; the S&P500 is up 100 points and the NASDAQ is up 470 points. Gold futures are having an inside day and are up $40-50/oz. Inside days also for crude oil and the $ index, while the S&P and the NASDAQ have outside days higher.
Spreads closed mixed/higher on Thursday, corn spreads were down 2 cents to up 4 and 1/4, and soybean spreads were unchanged to 4 and 3/4 higher. CK/CN closed at -6 and 3/4, up a half cent, and SK/SN closed at -9, up a penny. SK/SN traded to new highs for the move at -5 and 3/4 before reversing and closing lower, and CU/CZ made new contract lows again at -10 and 1/2.
Chatter surrounding the ongoing trade war between the US and China again dominated a majority of the headlines in the ag space on Thursday. Following several headlines touting a more conciliatory stance from the President Trump yesterday, China responded by demanding that all current unilateral tariffs be dropped before any talks occur. Trump has recently said this wasn't an option, which seemingly puts us back at the same place we started the week at: staring down a long and ugly trade war that seemingly has no fast solution. Other news on this front for Thursday included reports that China had recently made the biggest cancelation of US pork shipments since 2020 amid the ongoing hostilities, after raising tariffs to more than 80% on the imports. China has also recently allowed export contracts for hundreds of US meat packaging plants who export to them to expire, which creates even more uncertainty for that particular industry. Lastly, Trump, along with several news outlets including Reuters and Bloomberg, said that there were conservations this morning between the two sides, but details or confirmation of such conversation was lacking. Trump told reporters "they had a meeting this morning," and then added "it doesn't matter who 'they' is. We may reveal it later, but they had meetings this morning, and we've been meeting with China."
The Russia/Ukraine war was also back in the headlines on Thursday, somewhat indirectly, as the subject was (expectedly) brought up during a White House meeting between Trump and Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Store. Trump repeated claims that the two sides were "very close" to a peace deal to end the war, and added that Norway was going to help with ending the war though did not give any further specific details. Trump also said he doesn't view Russia as an obstacle to peace, and that they had made an offer to stop the fighting and not take all of Ukraine. It remains unclear as to just how much progress is actually being made between the two sides, with the conflict of late appearing to be a one step forward, two steps back situation, with little progress in either direction. The bottom line is that Russia is still pounding Ukrainian cities with missiles and rockets, which Trump has condemned.
Circling back to the ag-specific news for the day, this morning's weekly export sales report for the week ending April 17th showed another steady week of corn sales, while numbers for all three main crops as well as both soy products came in within trade expectations. Corn sales in the week totaled 1.153 mil mt's, with the featured buyer being Japan at 629,200 mt's; Korea booked 140,600 mt's in the week, Mexico booked 136,400 mt's and unknown destinations assigned out/rolled/canceled 256,000 mt's. Soybean sales were seen at 277k mt's, with featured buyers being Mexico (87,800 mt's) and the Netherlands (65,800 mt's). Of note, the report also showed China has just 200k mt's of outstanding old crop sales left to ship on the books. Wheat sales for the week came in at (145k) mt's, with cancelations of 158,400 mt's from unknown, 75,800 mt's from Mexico, and 35,000 mt's from Haiti; Vietnam was the standout on the buy side, booking 75,300 mt's in the week. New crop wheat sales came in at 372k mt's, while there were no new crop sales of corn or soybeans.
The 12Z forecast runs for the US trended wetter in the mid-south through parts of Texas/Oklahoma/Arkansas into the back half of next week, but otherwise were unchanged on Thursday and continue to offer soaking rains for much of the Plains and parts of the western Corn Belt now through the end of the week tomorrow. Scattered storms look to remain present through most of the Midwest into the middle of the week next week, with models then still attempting to bring in drier conditions in the week two period for the northern and western parts. The south and southeast look to stay wet into May 8th, which will further delay seeding progress in these areas. On the temperature side, there continues to be good model agreement on mostly above average warmth through most of the country into May 10th, but models are still trying to bring in a brief bout of cooler air to a small area of north-central Texas in the 5-10 day period.
Not a lot of note again on the global weather front today; starting with China, much of the growing regions here still see a warm/dry forecast for the next 10 days. Working to the west, much of India's growing regions in the north of the country also see a dry bias over the next 10 days but are cooler, while the Black Sea region and the southern parts of Russia's wheat belt see warm temps and scattered rain potential. Lastly, making our way over to South America, models here have continued to prolong the arrival of the dry season past the first week of May for Brazil's growing regions, while Argentina continues to also stay on the warm and dry side through the end of the month.